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The nation’s largest health insurance companies blasted a health reform proposal by Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas to exempt health policies from consumer protections and allow for the sale of cheaper policies with skimpier benefits.

Insurers through their lobbies released a multi-pronged attack on an amendment by Cruz to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Better Care Reconciliation Act, which would roll back the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion and increase the number of uninsured Americans by 22 million. Cruz's amendment to the BCRA, also known as Trumpcare, would strip protections from Americans who currently buy subsidized individual policies under the ACA in hopes of lowering prices.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, talks to is reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington about a proposal from Senate conservatives to let insurers sell skimpy policies provided they also offer a comprehensive alternative. It’s being billed as pro-consumer, but...

Cruz’s amendment, these insurers say, would allow health plans to “sell non-compliant plans if the health insurer offered at least one plan" on a state's public exchange, or marketplace.

But insurers say such "non-compliant policies would be exempt from consumer protections" like guaranteed access to coverage, community rating, "the ban on pre-existing condition exclusions and the requirement to offer comprehensive benefits with appropriate limits on patient cost-sharing," America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) said in a memo released Wednesday. AHIP represents the nation’s largest health insurance companies including
Anthem,
Centene, Oscar Health and Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies that offer individual coverage on the ACA’s public exchanges.

“Stable and well-functioning insurance markets require broad-based enrollment and a stable regulatory environment that facilitates fair competition and a level playing field,” America’s Health Insurance Plans said Wednesday. “Unfortunately, this proposal would fracture and segment insurance markets into separate risk pools and create an un-level playing field that would lead to widespread adverse selection and unstable health insurance markets.”

The Blue Cross association represents some of the nation's largest health plans, including Health Care Service Corp., which sells Obamacare policies in five states including Cruz's home state of Texas.

"If plans entering the market are not subject to guaranteed issue requirements and could engage in denials for preexisting conditions, offer limited benefit designs and narrow networks, they would attract only healthy people from the existing market," Serota wrote. "This would make coverage unaffordable for those that remain and who may need more robust coverage because of their preexisting medical conditions. The result would be higher premiums, increased federal tax credit costs for coverage available on exchanges, and insurers exiting the market or pricing coverage out of reach of consumers."